No, of course not. The reference to pasting a public key into an email is in reference to Contabo asking that we copy paste our ip/username/password over email

No, of course not. The reference to pasting a public key into an email is in reference to Contabo asking that we copy paste our ip/username/password over email for them to 'troubleshoot'. If the server had been setup with public keys and they really needed our help to access at least they could have just sent their own public key safely over email.